First Look

Eduard from the Czech Republic is easily the most prolific producer of aftermarket details. Period. Their series of photo-etched detail sets have brought additional fidelity to otherwise bland subjects, and have taken even the best-produced models and kicked them up a notch or two with details that cannot be produced with injection-molded plastic.

When Eduard first introduced the acetate-printed instrument faces that go behind their photo-etched instrument panels, this raised the bar on model cockpit reality as you could almostread the time on the aircraft clock. How could they top that?

It took a number of years, but the answer is color photo-etch. Eduard has developed a process for printing color directly on their photo-etched parts such that now you not only can read the instrument faces, you can now see the color warning placards and even tell the time on the analog instrument faces.

To top this all off, Eduard realized that some folks would have troubles stacking layers of photo-etched parts without having cyano oozing out of the wrong places and ruining the entire panel assembly. Eduard has developed a self-adhesive technology that makes the back of each part self-adhesive where all you need to do is remove each part from the fret and carefully align the parts atop one another, adjust as needed, then press them firmly together to make the lamination permanent. Nice!

In this release, Eduard has updated the front office of the Spitfire Mk.IX with the late-model instrument panel layout for the Tamiya kit in 1/32 scale. This set provides the color-printed instrument panel, side consoles, O2 regulator, compass, and details for the pilot's seat.

This set will really set off the inside of Tamiya kit and provide a level of detail that is difficult to achieve by hand-painting.

You should be able to find this detail set at your local hobby retailer or one of the many online hobby shops. Trust me, this is worth looking for!